The Assets Recovery Agency (Ara), the North's equivalent of the Criminal Assets Bureau, is to be merged with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).
The move is seen as connected with a drive to streamline the work done by law and order bodies throughout the UK.
The Ara was set up four years ago at an estimated cost of some £60 million (€90.36 million). It has headquarters in London and also an office in Belfast under the leadership of former PSNI Asst Chief Constable Alan McQuillan.
Soca was established only last year to combat drug crimes and other major offences, but will now assume the assets recovery duties previously held by the Ara.
The Northern Ireland Office said the Ara's 50 staff in Belfast would have the opportunity to apply for positions in the expanded Soca which is to have a dedicated Belfast office. Last year the agency in Belfast froze criminal assets estimated at nearly £16 million.
Security minister Paul Goggins commended the Ara for its "fantastic work" and applauded the work it had done.
But he added: "The merging of Soca with the Ara will make the fight against crime even more intense, even stronger." He denied the Home Office in London was undermining confidence in efforts to recover criminal assets by the amalgamation and claimed the same level of resources would be directed at the break-up of criminal gangs and paramilitary racketeering.
"Soca brings a partnership, a whole breadth of experience and skills and understanding and intelligence to bear in the fight against crime," the minister said. "The partnership of the Assets Recovery Agency and Soca together will gives us a strength that we have not had before," he told BBC Radio Ulster.
"We need to defeat the criminal gangs not least because of the potential for them to fund paramilitary activity. I've sought assurances from the Home Office and been given them that the resource levels that we have had so far in the Assets Recovery Agency will be maintained within the new merged organisation." He said he wanted existing Ara staff to continue to be part of the fight against crime in Northern Ireland.
"All of them will have the opportunity to transfer into Soca," he added.